1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of remote electronic locating and control devices and more particularly to a device for reporting its location and environment and initiating actions remotely.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Tracking the location of an object; be it an animate object or an inanimate object such as a car, truck, a person or a priceless piece of art has been a concern for many years. Moving companies, package delivery companies and trucking fleet companies are concerned about the whereabouts of their vehicles. Car owners are concerned about their car when it is lost or stolen. Parents are concerned about the whereabouts of their children and elders. Museums are concerned about the location of their art works. Supermarkets are concerned about the location of their shopping carts. Law enforcement officials are concerned with the whereabouts of criminals who are repeat offenders or who are under house arrest. The examples are endless. Furthermore, often additional information or control is desired such as the speed of the object, the temperature of the object and/or operation of devices. Additionally, it may be desired to remotely initiate a secure transaction with the device, such as unlocking the device, enabling a feature, turning a light or alarm on or off, etc.
Determining the location of the object in the locale of the object is known. For instance, a Global Positioning System installed in a vehicle will tell someone within the vehicle where they are. Relaying that information back to a remote location has been done, but, in general, requires a service with operators, a special remote device or access to the internet. Nothing suggests using natural language commands entered as text messages into an off-the-shelf cell phone and retrieving natural language text message responses describing a location or other information on the same phone.
Various solutions and services have been invented and developed to address some of these problems. U.S. Pat. No. 6,441,778, titled “Pet Locator”, refers to one solution using a GPS receiver to determine if the object's location is within a coordinate range and sends location information to a base station upon detecting the location is outside of the coordinate range. Much of the prior art depends on proprietary transmission methods and/or proprietary user terminal devices. U.S. Pat. No. 6,172,640 to Durst, et al. refers to a solution using two-way paging to communicate between a base station and an object locator. This system does not provide any natural language support and no or limited security (e.g., anyone can send a page request to a locator device).
What is needed is a locator that will respond to natural language commands entered on a readily available user terminal, providing security and optional measurement and control.